This invention relates to a moving picture processing method and moving picture processing apparatus for editing multimedia information, particularly moving picture data.
As satellite broadcasting (BS broadcasting) and cable television broadcasting (CATV) have been popularized, the number of video channels that can be viewed in the home is steadily increasing. It is safe to say that an environment is being enriched in which ordinary users can access large numbers of pictures in the field of DVDs (digital versatile disks) that can record and reproduce video and audio information in the form of digital data, as well as in the fields of video recording mediums including conventional video tape and laser disks.
In contrast, the techniques for efficiently accessing the desired one of large numbers of pictures have not progressed. For example, viewers choose their desired pictures (programs), referring to the program column in the newspaper. In the case of consumers who want to buy video software packages, they choose their desired video packages, referring to the titles, cast, and plot written on the packages.
On the packages, the contents of pictures are described in letters in text form, but not all of the pictures are described. It goes without saying that describing all of the pictures in text form would take a lot of time and labor.
Furthermore, the desire to watch a particular part of the picture differs from user to user, so providing text descriptions intended for all users leads to an increase in the volume of additional information, which makes it difficult to put the approach to practical use, especially in the case of a source that has a limit to the amount of information to be supplied, such as broadcasting media.
Therefore, even when a viewer wants to watch only a particular topic in a news program, he or she has to wait for the desired topic to appear, leaving the television on, or is forced to repeatedly watch the news that the viewer has already watched in another program, resulting in a considerable waste of time.
The mainstream method of selecting the desired portion of the video information is a method of displaying pictures in such a manner that each changing point (a cut) of a scene is represented by a single small picture (icon) and allowing the user to choose the desired icon on the screen to tell the system the playback starting point or edit operation.
The method is based on the assumption that any part of the supplied video data can be accessed by request of the user (random access). It cannot be said that the method takes into account a case where information flows only in one direction as in broadcasting media.
When a system is used which processes pictures in a manner that enables the user to access the pictures randomly, the user has to transfer and record the video information once in the system to watch the program now being broadcast, which impairs the convenience seriously.
Furthermore, with the method of displaying a scene of pictures in such a manner that each cut is expressed by a single icon, for example, if a cut is created at regular intervals of five seconds, 1440 small pictures will be displayed for two hours of pictures. When the small screens are displayed in list form, the legibility cannot be said to be high.
With such a poor video environment, even if an environment where the user can access a huge amount of video information comes into being in the near future, it will be impossible to enjoy the amount of information smoothly and there is a possibility that the number of users getting confused due to the overwhelming volume of information will increase.
Specifically, an effective method of filtering the information from noninteractive video media, such as broadcasting media, in real time has not been proposed.
Moreover, although the present techniques provide the evaluation of the similarity of two still pictures or of the similarity of a moving picture to a still picture, a concrete method of determining the similarity between two moving pictures has not been proposed.
Furthermore, in connection with displaying the contents of pictures in the form of a list of small pictures, a concrete method of reducing the number of small pictures to be displayed according to the contents of pictures has not been proposed.
It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to overcome the above disadvantages in the prior art by reducing the time for the user to have to continue watching the screen even when the user has accessed an image source that the user cannot always access randomly, by preventing the scenes except for the desired one from being displayed.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of determining the similarity between two moving pictures.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a method of increasing the number of information to be displayed by information-filtering moving pictures on the basis of the determined similarity.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing method comprising the steps of:
extracting first feature amount data that indicates a feature of a first frame of the inputted moving picture data;
judging on the basis of the first feature amount data and second feature amount data indicating a feature of a second frame of the moving picture inputted before the first frame whether or not the first frame is similar to the second frame; and
creating first picture data for displaying a first picture corresponding to the first frame at least in a part of a second picture corresponding to the second frame, when it has been judged that the first frame is similar to the second frame.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing method comprising the steps of:
extracting first feature amount data that indicates a feature of a first frame of the inputted moving picture data;
judging on the basis of the first feature amount data and second feature amount data indicating a feature of a second frame of the moving picture inputted before the first frame whether or not the first frame is similar to the second frame; and
creating second picture data for displaying a preset still picture at least in a part of a second picture corresponding to the second frame, when it has been judged that the first frame is similar to the second frame.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing method comprising the steps of:
extracting first feature amount data that indicates a feature of a first frame of the inputted moving picture data;
judging on the basis of the first feature amount data and second feature amount data indicating a feature of a second frame of the moving picture inputted before the first frame whether or not the first frame is similar to the second frame;
creating first picture data for displaying a preset still picture at least in a part of a second picture corresponding to the second frame, when it has been judged that the first frame is similar to the second frame;
judging whether or not the second picture corresponding to the second frame is a preset stop cancellation screen; and
creating second picture data for displaying the second picture corresponding to the second frame, when it has been judged that the second picture corresponding to the second frame is a preset stop cancellation screen.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing apparatus comprising:
extracting means for extracting first feature amount data that indicates a feature of a first frame of the inputted moving picture data;
judging means for judging on the basis of the first feature amount data and second feature amount data indicating a feature of a second frame of the moving picture inputted before the first frame whether or not the first frame is similar to the second frame; and
first creating means for creating first picture data for displaying a first picture corresponding to the first frame at least in a part of a second picture corresponding to the second frame, when it has been judged that the first frame is similar to the second frame.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing apparatus comprising:
extracting means for extracting first feature amount data that indicates a feature of a first frame of the inputted moving picture data;
judging means for judging on the basis of the first feature amount data and second feature amount data indicating a feature of a second frame of the moving picture inputted before the first frame whether or not the first frame is similar to the second frame; and
first creating means for creating second picture data for displaying a preset still picture at least in a part of a second picture corresponding to the second frame, when it has been judged that the first frame is similar to the second frame.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing apparatus comprising:
extracting means for extracting first feature amount data that indicates a feature of a first frame of the inputted moving picture data;
first judging means for judging on the basis of the first feature amount data and second feature amount data indicating a feature of a second frame of the moving picture inputted before the first frame whether or not the first frame is similar to the second frame;
first creating means for creating first picture data for displaying a preset still picture at least in a part of a second picture corresponding to the second frame, when it has been judged that the first frame is similar to the second frame;
second judging means for judging whether or not the second picture corresponding to the second frame is a preset stop cancellation screen; and
second creating means for creating second picture data for displaying the second picture corresponding to the second frame, when it has been judged that the second picture corresponding to the second frame is a preset stop cancellation screen.
With the above invention, the feature amount data indicating the feature of a frame of the inputted moving pictures is extracted, and a judgment is made whether or not the frames are similar to each other, on the basis of the extracted feature amount data and the feature amount data indicating the feature of the frames inputted in the past. When it has been judged that they are similar, the frame of the inputted moving picture data is displayed in window form or a preset still screen is displayed.
According to a seventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing method comprising the step of:
selecting a first frame having at least one frame of a first shot of the inputted moving picture data;
extracting first feature amount data that indicates a feature of the selected first frame; and
judging on the basis of the first feature amount data and second feature amount data that indicates feature of a second frame having at least one frame of a second shot of the moving picture inputted before the first shot whether or not the first shot is similar to the second shot.
According to an eighth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing apparatus comprising:
selecting means for selecting a first frame having at least one frame of a first shot of the inputted moving picture data;
extracting means for extracting first feature amount data that indicates a feature of the selected first frame; and
judging means for judging on the basis of the first feature amount data and second feature amount data that indicates a feature of a second frame having at least one frame of a second shot of the moving picture inputted before the first shot whether or not the first shot is similar to the second shot.
With the above invention, the feature amount data indicating the feature of a frame in a shot of the inputted moving pictures is extracted, and a judgment is made whether or not the shots are similar to each other, on the basis of the extracted feature amount data and the feature amount data indicating the feature of the frames in the shots inputted in the past. When it has been judged that they are similar, the shots of the inputted moving picture data are displayed at least in a part of the display screen.
According to a ninth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing method comprising the steps of:
selecting a first shot serving as a comparison reference from the inputted moving picture data;
selecting a second shot to be compared from the inputted moving picture data;
judging whether or not the first shot is similar to the second shot;
putting a first label on the second shot, when it has been judged that the first shot is not similar to the second shot;
judging whether or not the second shot is a preset shot; and
creating picture data for displaying a screen corresponding to one frame selected from the second shot with the first label at least in a part of a display screen, when it has been judged that the second shot is a preset shot.
According to a tenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing method comprising:
a first step of selecting a first shot serving as a comparison reference from the inputted moving picture data;
a second step of selecting the shot next to the first shot as a second shot to be compared from the inputted moving picture data;
a third step of judging whether or not the first shot is similar to the second shot;
a fourth step of putting a first label on the second shot, when it has been judged that first shot is not similar to the second shot;
a sixth step of judging whether or not the second shot is a preset shot;
a fifth step of determining the shot next to the second shot to be a new second shot, when it has been judged that the second shot is not a preset shot, and then executing the third step to the fifth step repeatedly;
a seventh step of judging whether or not a specified number of shots have been made the first shot, when it has been judged that the second shot is a preset shot;
an eighth step of determining the shot next to the first shot to be a new first shot, when a specific number of shots have not been made the first shot, and then executing the third step to the seventh step repeatedly; and
a ninth step of creating image data for displaying a screen corresponding to one frame selected from the second shot with the first label, when it has been judged that a specific number of shots have been made the first shot.
According to an eleventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving picture processing apparatus comprising:
first selecting means for selecting a first shot serving as a comparison reference from the inputted moving picture data;
second selecting means for selecting a second shot to be compared from the inputted moving picture data;
first judging means for judging whether or not the first shot is similar to the second shot;
labeling means for putting a first label on the second shot, when it has been judged that first shot is not similar to the second shot;
second judging means for judging whether or not the second shot is a preset shot; and
creating means for creating image data for displaying a screen corresponding to one frame selected from the second shot with the first label at least in a part of a display screen, when it has been judged that the second shot is a preset shot.
With the above invention, because a judgment is made whether or not the inputted shot is similar to a shot inputted in the past and only dissimilar shots are displayed, the amount of information displayed on the screen increases.
Additional object and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The object and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.